Rob Ambrose said "nothing different" about Towson after 3-0 start

Seven teams in the most recent Football Championship Subdivision poll announced by The Sports Network boast 3-0 records, and Towson has the highest ranking among those seven, sitting in the fourth spot.

It’s the second time in the last three seasons that the Tigers are enjoying a 3-0 start, but coach Rob Ambrose said it’s business as usual in the aftermath of Saturday night’s 49-7 demolition of Delaware State.

“We’re confident – confident more from preparation,” he said during a conference call Tuesday morning organized by the Colonial Athletic Association. “It’s nothing different from what it’s been before. We just know we have to go play our style of football every play for as long as we can do it, and good things tend to work out. While we might be 3-0 and the statistics and all of that good stuff, the score’s 0-0, and we’ve got a whole new game. We have to start over this coming Saturday. What we did last weekend is nice. We need to build upon it, but we’ve got to start over and the only game that counts is the one in front of us.”

That game in front of Towson is Saturday’s road contest against North Carolina Central (2-1). The Tigers have walloped Delaware State and Holy Cross on Sept. 7 by identical 49-7 scores, which is beneficial in terms of comfort.

But are the easy outcomes too easy for Ambrose’s taste?

“We know who we are versus who we’ve played and how well we can play,” he said. “But to be honest, in the locker room, in the staff rooms, in the meeting rooms, the conversation is about us. It’s not about the other teams. We just need to go do what we need to do the way we need to do it, and if we stay true to that and stay true to each other, good things to tend to happen, and then it really doesn’t matter who ends up against you.”

Towson rolled up a 35-0 advantage over the Hornets at halftime on Saturday, forcing Ambrose to make a strategic decision about the starters’ playing time in the second half.

“We talked at halftime and said that if all things go as well as we would like them to, we would commit two full series in the third quarter to both starters on the offensive and defensive side of the ball and then we would pull guys out,” he explained. “The goal is to never run up the score, but 30 minutes of work is not a conference football game. When we get into conference play, you need to be ready for 60 minutes-plus, and if you only play half a game, there are detriments to that. There’s also the balancing of, should anybody get hurt when they don’t need to be there? It’s a very delicate balance. So we had a plan going into the third quarter and [junior] Derrick Joseph destroyed that plan by returning a kickoff [95 yards] for a touchdown [to open the second half]. So we made it one more series for both sides of the ball and started pulling starters just to keep them fresh and healthy for the long run.”